They separated. Tommie hurried along through the cut and Vicky climbed the hill to the summit. She knew that the man lying in the junipers could see her. If she had known exactly where he was, she would have gone straight to him and forced him to give up his plan by remaining at his side. But in the thick underbrush she knew there would be small chance of finding him. At the brow of the hill she stopped and swept the path with her eyes. Nobody was coming toward her along it from town. Her heart was in a tumult of alarm. If Hugh came by the cut and Tommie failed to meet him or to impress him sufficiently of the danger, he would walk straight into the ambush prepared for him. She was torn by conflicting impulses. One was to hurry down the hill to town with the hope of finding Hugh before he started. Another was to retrace her steps toward the junction of paths and wait for him there. Perhaps if the bushwhacker saw her there he would not dare to risk a shot. But she rejected this as a vain hope. He could fire in perfect security from the brush and slip away in the gathering dusk without any likelihood of detection. It was not in her nature to wait in patience while Hugh might be hurrying into peril. She turned and walked swiftly back along the path she had just climbed. The shadow of dusk was falling. Objects at a distance began to appear shadowy, to take on indistinctness of outline. The panic in her grew with the passing minutes. A pulse in her parched throat beat fast. Sobs born of sheer terror choked her as she stumbled forward. She stopped, close to the tunnel where the little boy had been entombed. With all her senses keyed she listened. No sound came to her tortured brain, but waves of ether seemed to roll across the flat and beat upon her ears. She waited, horrible endless minutes of agonized distress. In a small voice she cried out to the man in the chaparral that she was watching him, that if he fired she would be a witness against him. But her hoarse voice scarce carried a dozen yards. From out of the junipers a rifle cracked. She ran down the path blindly, in an agony of fright. Before she had taken three steps the rifle sounded again. A scream filled the dusk, a scream of fear and pain and protest. The lurching figure of a man moved out of the gloom toward the running girl. It stumbled and went down. With a sob of woe Vicky flung herself down upon the prostrate body. “Hugh!” she cried, and the word carried all her love, fears, dreads, and terrors. No sound came from the still form her arms embraced. CHAPTER XLII HUGH RIDES TO AN APPOINTMENT Bald Knob hummed with activities. The Ground Hog was taking out quantities of rich ore. On Vicky’s claim the leasers had struck a vein which might or might not develop into a paying proposition. A dozen other shafts were going down and from the side of the hill a tunnel was progressing at a right angle toward the Ground Hog drift.